Well, I had planned on introducing my boys one at a time so everyone could get a feel for them and their little personalities. The OCD in me tells me that I should start with my oldest and work my way down but, today my middle son is heavy on my heart.
Colby was born in April of 2008. I remember feeling disconnected after he was born. I didn’t know why but I knew that something was “off”. 12 hours later, my whole world fell apart.
I was a young mom. I had his big brother Austin, just two weeks shy of my 21st birthday. He was a beautiful, healthy, happy little boy and was only 18 months old when little Colby was born. We never realized how lucky we were to have a healthy child. Colby would make sure we never took that for granted again.
I woke up at 7am in my hospital room. I couldn’t believe it was morning already and the nurse hadn’t brought my baby back. She took him a little after midnight, was going to clean him up and bring him right back in to me. I was planning on breastfeeding and remember walking myself out to the nurses station ready to yell at them if they had kept him in the nursery and fed him bottles all night. Looking back now, I wish that was the only reason they had kept him all night.
I turned the corner of the hallway and you know that warm fuzzy feeling you get when looking through the nursery glass at a newborn baby? Well I didn’t get that. I saw wires, tubes, doctors, oxygen hoods and a consent form for him to be transported to a bigger hospital. I felt cold and disoriented, unsure of what was going on…praying I was just having a nightmare.
The doctor came out, told me he had a heart murmur and he needed to be transported immediately. I called my husband who was at home with our other son and told him he needed to come…NOW. He got there just in time to watch Colby get wheeled out to the ambulance in an isolette. Thankfully, my OBGYN discharged me right away so we could follow them over.
I was not sure what to expect when we got there, but when I saw him for the first time I knew it wasn’t good.
He had several heart defects and was going to need surgery. I remember thinking, “This can’t be my real life. Someone is going to come and say they made a mistake and we can go home.” Home…Home to my 18th month old who had never been away from me. Home to the new nursery we spent hours preparing for him. Home to our families and to show them all how cute our new baby boy was. Home to be a family of 4 and to get ready to tackle the challenges of raising 2 little boys. Home. I just wanted to go home.
At 4 days old, he had his first heart surgery. His aorta was too narrow so they clipped the narrowed part out, and then attached the two ends back together. That surgery was the longest 4 hrs of my life. I don’t think I had ever hurt so much, cried so much or ever been so worried. There really aren’t words to describe it. It was the first time I had ever seen my husband breakdown. I don’t know about you all, but when you see someone who is so stoic and so strong crumble right before your eyes it is one of the most gut wrenching things to experience. I still get a pit in my stomach just thinking about it. Somehow we pulled ourselves together and became an awesome team from that moment on.
Our baby boy came flying through that surgery like it was nothing. My little superman. 6 days later and we were…home. It felt good to have everyone under the same roof. We felt like a family and tried to get on with life the best we could.
3 weeks later we would be shaken from that comfort and given another scare. Colby wasn’t eating well. He didn’t look right and was very lethargic. We took him to the emergency room where we found out even more about the conditions of his heart. He was also born with Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome and was now symptomatic for the first time. His heart rate was 329 beats per minute. They quickly took him from my arms to a trauma room in the emergency department. We were surrounded by doctors in white coats, and they even sent the chaplain in to talk to us. I don’t remember much else about that day other than him turning gray and me begging and pleading God to do something, anything, to make him better. I remembered wondering if I would ever get it hold him again and I know, without doubt, I will never, ever, ever, ever forget what that felt like.
My little man got over that hurdle thanks to God’s grace, today’s medicine and a few awesome doctors. We spent 5 more days in the hospital and again we were…home. Over the next year things were pretty normal for us. When your family goes through so much, normal feels good. We knew how lucky we were to have the boys and how thankful we were that conditions were not any worse.
Colby had another surgery at 13 months old. It wasn’t heart related but he still had several battle wounds from it. They attempted to repair his eye muscles and then he had a couple other things they needed to take care of. He was cut from hip bone to hip bone, (clear across his abdomen) and about six other laparoscopy incisions. He woke up from that surgery wanting nothing but pancakes of all things! We again felt so relieved…so blessed. A couple days later and we were…home.
The last few years have flown by. We had a new baby, Austin and Colby both started school, and I went back to school and earned my degree. Some of it just seems like a big blur now. It all came and went so fast. We had a few more scares with his heart rate going too fast. I can play them over and over again in my head. We rush him to the hospital. They take us straight back. He usually is gray or turning gray by this point. We get swarmed with white coats and people with badges rushing in to help. They put in an IV, order the meds and we all stare at the heart monitor and wait to see if it worked. It usually takes a few tries and then his heart flips back into normal gear and we all let out a sigh of relief. I think he bounces back quicker than we do. I age a good 10 years every time and the constant worry of the next episode turns me into a paranoid mess of a mommy.
My husband works his tail off in order to give us a life I could have only dreamed about. We have gone to Disney World a few times and several other memory making vacations, spent our summers camping, swimming, fishing, catching frogs, teaching the boys how to ride their bicycles and all the other little things that little boys are supposed to do. And for that I will FOREVER be grateful. Colby played t ball (or should I say played in the dirt while the rest of the team played t ball) and flag football (where you could often find him under the bleachers eating hotdogs and ring pops) but, his most favorite thing is participating in the junior rodeos. He loved sheep riding. He is a cowboy at heart, plain and simple. He is a spitting image of his daddy inside and out. Perhaps that is why he is so tough…He falls down, gets back up, steals a kiss from his momma, dusts off those chaps and he is ready to go again. He is always so brave, especially for such a little guy.
Today, I am sitting in his hospital room watching him sleep. He lets a cry out every once in awhile. “Mommy, I wanna go home.” “Me too, Baby” is all I can think of to say. I want to go home too. Home to where you are wrestling with your brothers and making me want to pull my hair out. Home to where you wake me up at 5 am begging for a cold hot dog for breakfast. Home to where I have to walk upstairs with you to get your PJs because you are too scared to go up yourself. Home to where you dump totes of dinosaurs in the middle of the floor and I step on them with my bare feet…home.
Instead we spent the night on the cardiac floor after along day in the cath lab. He was sent there for an ablation yesterday morning that was supposed to take care of the higher heart rates he sometimes experiences, to get him off of his heart medicine and to give us some peace of mind. However, after 8.5 hrs of the doctor battling Colby’s strange anatomy, calling in other doctors for support and still not being able to get to the the exact place she needed to, she had to call it quits so she didn’t further damage his heart. We also learned that he has a more dangerous type of the higher heart rate and it can been life threatening so he will go back on his medicine and we will now have to set limits to all those things that he always did before. No more t ball. No more flag football. No more riding sheep. I feel like we were robbed of a lot today and it doesn’t seem fair at all. I am holding on to the fact that if nothing else, the procedure gave us life saving information. It is better for us to know now and be able to keep him safe. We will keep praying that God watches over him and we will find alternative activities to get him involved in so he doesn’t feel like he is missing out on so much when his brothers can do things that he can’t. And we will keep praying that it is only temporary and that when he gets bigger, over the next few years, we can try the ablation again and this next time it will be more successful.
I didn’t really mean to write a novel…I just needed to vent and I am so proud of his journey, that I needed to share it. There is so much more to my little buckaroo than all this medical stuff. He is crazy funny and can make me laugh even on my worst days. He is so loving. I seriously can’t think of a child (or an adult for that matter) who loves more than Colby does. He shows constant concern for everyone else. Whether it is the baby crying down the hall or a kid crying at a grocery store, Colby always wants to give them something to cheer them up. His kind heart and total selflessness make me so proud to be his mommy. He has a lot to give and he could teach us all a thing or two about being kind and loving each other. He is everything I wish I could be and makes me want to be a better person. He doesn’t have an enemy or even dislike anyone. He truly sees the good in everyone, even when I sometimes can’t. He is quick to forgive and can never stay mad for more than a few seconds. He’s quirky. He’s sweet. He’s loving. He’s brave. He’s tough. He’s my Superman.
“Mommy, it’s ok if the doctors have to fix my heart. I gonna be just fine. I have love for the whole world in there…they won’t break it.” -Colby
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